Missionary Slain at School in Burkina Faso

Brother Ignacio García Alonso was director of the congregation's school in Tounouma, near Bobo-Dioulasso, in this western African nation.

The Spanish religious had spent more than 40 years as a missionary in Morocco and Niger and especially in Burkina Faso, according to the Vatican agency Fides. He was recently appointed headmaster of the school where he had taught for several years in the 1970s.

Brother García was found in his office with his skull smashed by machete blows. Following a prayer vigil in his school, he was buried in Toussiana today.

The Ivicon agency said the missionary's murder was "an act of vengeance perpetrated by the father of a pupil who had been expelled from the school for bad behavior."